U.K. rockers Maximo Park are hitting festivals around the world this summer and are keeping a diary for Spinner. In the first entry, frontman Paul Smith overcomes the craziness of his band's sets at Glastonbury, mourns the death of Michael Jackson and worships at the feet of Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.

Britain is gripped by its first heatwave of the season. As I type, clear beams of sunlight hit the face of my wristwatch, giving the effect of an tiny, erratic mirror ball pinging around the room. I think the first signs of this weather came on Thursday. That day, our band had the pleasure of opening the Glastonbury festival in a small tent called the Queen's Head before going on to play the Other Stage on Saturday night. I immediately regretted the decision to wear black as the West Country sun bore down on my cheap, easy-iron shirt. Just to cool myself down, I ate some festival jerk chicken -- mistake number two. Amidst the chemical toilets and the guide ropes, I found a little peace in reading 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter' by Carson McCullers, about a deaf-mute in the Deep South.

Rock Central Plaza is more literate than your average indie act. They're led by a twice-published author who wrote an entire album about robot horses and their latest effort was inspired by a William Faulkner novel.

While Toronto's vibrant music scene has produced a number of big name indie bands -- Broken Social Scene and Feist to name two -- you'd be hard pressed to find one that combines intriguing lyrics and layered sounds as compellingly as Rock Plaza Central. With both sides of their songwriting coin equally polished, the seven-piece offers an assault on both the ears and the mind that most other groups can't match.

But ultimately, the reason they transcend the rest of the Canadian indie pack is lyricism. Like John K. Samson of the Weakerthans, frontman Chris Eaton is an expert at turning difficult-to-parse concepts into easy-to-understand prose. On his latest album, '...At the Moment of Our Most Needing or if Only They Could Turn Around They Would Know They Weren't Alone,' the songwriter tackles lofty subjects like God, temptation and love with a profoundness lacking among his cohorts.

Twelve years it took -- in 1997, Neil Young was supposed to headline the Pyramid Stage; an appearance curtailed by a rather messy accident whilst making a ham sandwich. More than a decade later, Glastonbury finally got its date with Canada's Godfather of grunge on Friday night.

With a reputation for perverse setlists -- just because there's tens of thousands of fans anticipating the classics doesn't mean he'll play them -- Young unleashed a blistering, amp-mangling performance which put paid to any fears of obtuse, audience-alienating stubbornness.

It started with post-punk 'Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)' and 'Mansion on the Hill' before fans were treated to a filling-rattling coda to 'Down by the River' as Young corralled his band through a spine-tingling set heavy on Crazy Horse-era material.

To mark the launch of Spinner Canada, we're doing an in-depth series on the Canadian indie music scene that has, in recent years, taken the world by storm. In Part I we explore the foundation laid in the 1980s and '90s while Part II examines this decade's explosion and Part III will look towards the next wave.

Oh, Canada: An Intro

It may be easily forgotten in our current Age of Feist, but the turn of the 21st century was not kind to Canada's international musical reputation. The fledgling maple music industry had found its footing in the late '80s and early '90s with bands like Sloan, Tragically Hip and Blue Rodeo. But unlike Alanis, Sarah and Celine, these great Canadian indie/alternative hopes couldn't quite make it across the border.

The prevailing opinion, both nationally and abroad, was that Canada would remain relegated to vapid pop production. But in basements and lofts around the nation's biggest cities – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver – bands such as Broken Social Scene, the New Pornographers, the Dears, the Stills, Stars and Arcade Fire were laying down the foundation for the musical maelstrom that was to come.

If you've ever wanted to hear how Crosby, Stills and Nash developed their trademark sound as one of rock's first supergroups, now is your chance. Their latest release, 'Demos,' features a dozen tracks recorded between 1968 and 1971 that would end up on the band's albums and the members' solo albums. "They're very revealing," David Crosby tells Spinner of the collection. "They're also very damn good, actually."

The demos exist because the group's songwriting process, which is similar to that of many bands, according to Crosby. "When you write a song, the first thing you want to do is to show it to somebody, because we're all approval-seekers," he says. "I'll even do it over the phone. I'll call Graham Nash up and go 'listen to this.' The next thing you want to do is record it some place so you don't forget it. These are those recordings -- the first time you sat down in front of a microphone and tried to see what the song was actually going to do."

Listening to the tracks is like going in a time machine, according to Crosby. "Sometimes you get an almost gestalt kind of picture of you sitting there," he says. "You can almost smell the smells and taste the tastes, one of those really strong impressions of the moment will happen when you hear it." Two tracks in particular really stand out to him. "'I Almost Cut My Hair' was a very strong memory -- it was a ballad when I wrote it," he says. "'Music is Love' is kind of an improvisation. It was Neil Young, Nash and I goofing off in the studio, just screwing around, and this thing kind of accidentally happened. It was a very delicious moment."

Simply having Malian griot Cheick Hamala Diabate and his crew in the Blues Tent at the just-finished New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival this year on the event's second Friday, was enough to make the connect-the-dots point, as he at one point switched from his traditional ngoni to its Transatlantic descendant, the banjo (a five-string in this case, no less). Then there was the the second-lining, umbrella-toting local woman coming on stage for a joyous dance-off with one of the troupe's singers. But there was more to come.

First a jaunt to the Congo Square stage for a little of a superjam featuring the city's two leading renewers and refreshers of the brass band traditions, the Dirty Dozen and Rebirth. But got waylaid on route by members of the Ori Culture Danse Club of Benin, who have set up a little ad hoc African marketplace next to the Jazz & Heritage Stage, resulting in some comical, coerced trying on of pants over shorts and linguistically tortured Franglish price negotiations (note to self: plan trip to Benin to get the $5 change still owed).

The New Orleans Jazz Fest celebrated its 40th year recently, with 12 stages and more than 200 acts, over the course of two weekends: April 24-26 and April 30-May 3. The festival featured perofmances by Neil Young, Dave Matthews Band, Erykah Badu, James Taylor and Sharon Jones, among many others. Check out the pictures from the Crescent City's annual event below.